Free Fleet Box Set 1

by Michael Chatfield

  Whoever these aliens were, they knew their shit. About a half hour later, the section of wall that had closed opened and Connolly looked at the eight Earth shuttles that were now there, their crews being systematically searched. He made a rough head count. Thanks to some loud cursing, yelling and screaming, as well as spitting, kicking, punching, and biting in one case—he was going to need a damned good dentist—it looked as if everyone was still there.

  The man who was the leader pulled off his helmet and flicked his emo slice to one side, revealing blood-red eyes, which seemed to pierce Connolly’s skull as they flicked over him.

  “Shut the fuck up!” he yelled.

  Subsonics shook Connolly’s very bones as he was reminded of his non-commissioned officer yelling at him in basic training, putting the fear of God and the Marines into him.

  Silence descended as the man looked over them, studying them as much as they studied him. He looked human, but for the eyes and the fact he was on a Planetary Defense Force ship. Connolly wasn’t sure. Maybe he’s one of the recruits? he thought with shame as he wondered how much the PDF had changed this kid to make him like that.

  “My name is Commander Salchar—yes, the gamer. Now, Marines, I welcome you to the dreadnought Resilient, my flagship and for the time being, your home. I can’t really explain much, but for your own safety, you will be detained until we can have an actual talk and have you returned to Earth. Now! The first thing you need to know is that we are not a Syndicate force. Those fuckers are masquerading as some kind of Defense Force bullshit. Many of the Commandos around you are human and will react just the same way you would if you got your gear spit on, especially because they’ve got to clean it off after our little meet and greet,” Salchar growled.

  “Commandos,” he said. There was no mistaking the command in his voice. Humans, Sarenmenti, and Kuruvians took off their helmets. More than one of his Marines yelled at the Sarenmenti and Kuruvians, while pleading with the humans to help them.

  Salchar slammed his foot down and as some kept on bumbling hysterically, he talked over them. “You will be put into holding. Act like an asshole, and we’ll be assholes. So don’t be a jerk. I have a battle to win and our world to save, so don’t make me have to look in on you more than I have to.” His voice was like iron and Connolly doubted anyone would want to cause a ruckus after the man’s speech.

  A group fell in around him as he walked away and the Mechas in the room moved with quick, precise movements.

  Unarmored people and aliens ran around, securing Connolly’s assault shuttles to the deck, going inside quickly before turning to other tasks in the shuttle bay, or disappearing through one of the hatches that led into the actual ship. Commandos picked up Connolly as if he were a child, attaching his bound hands to the harness with something similar to duct tape. One by one, his men were similarly strapped into the shuttle’s harnesses. A Commando walking to the front took more than a little verbal abuse from Connolly’s men. It took off its helmet, showing a woman underneath. Presently shutting everyone up for a few seconds.

  “My name is Company Commander Keiko. Commander Salchar has made it clear that no harm is to come to you if at all possible. So I will make you a promise: do as you’re told or I’ll stun you. Keep doing it and I’ll shoot you. This is space. I don’t have time to hold your hands, and we’re already losing a squad to looking after your asses, a squad that could be used to keep my friends alive.”

  There was no missing the truth or sincerity of her words.

  “Lady, I was fighting before you were born.”

  Keiko’s smile was anything but kind as she stared at the commenter. “Fighting before I was born? On Earth? Where you have atmosphere and a single round hitting you does not mean explosive decompression? Where you have people trained to keep you alive? Some place you can go back to that’s safe? Weapons that kill at hundreds of meters, not thousands of kilometers? Fighting people with less advanced weaponry than your own, not fighting in your own skin—sometimes against two-ton Mechas that can kill you with a back swipe as if you were a fly? Where a single round could leave you a puddle of paste across a wall?” She advanced on the commentator as she spoke.

  “You’ve been fighting in environments you know about before you ever step into them. Never places that don’t have twelve times your number trying to kill you from every direction, with weapon emplacements built into the walls that could destroy a corvette. You might’ve been playacting before I was born, but you’ve never fought like I do. The Armored Marine Commandos may have been made in a year, but it is the hardest fucking unit you will ever find this side of the galaxy, forged in a hell you couldn’t imagine and haven’t even begun to understand.”

  Growls rose from the other Commandos waiting in the back of the shuttle.

  “And the part about getting pasted to the wall in a swipe—don’t test my people or you’ll quickly find out the truth.” She walked out of the shuttle without a backward glance as some people filed off with her; others studied the Marines and their pilots with bored but alert interest. Then the shuttle sealed up and buffeted.

  Connolly could hear the movement of hundreds of Mechas outside the shuttle and yelling.

  ***

  After my little talk with the Marines boarding team, I rushed to the bridge. Never a moment’s rest being Salchar, I thought as I waited for the blast doors’ slow opening sequence.

  “The weapons systems for the Syndicate ships are down. Henry is requesting support,” Rick said as I connected to him.

  I changed to the bridge’s speaker. “Helm, if we use the Earth or the moon, can we give those shuttles better velocity?”

  “Yes, Commander.”

  “Okay, get those shuttles loaded and prepped. Nav, give me that route info and make sure the fleet is ready. Helm, plot us in.

  “Fire all shuttles at those ships. Except fifteen percent reserve.”

  “On it,” Rick said.

  I cut my connection and rushed from the lift to the blast doors. No one saluted me or stood as I got into my command chair, screens vying for my attention. I checked all of the shuttles, finding them all ready, most of them holding Commandos already. A few were without, but their Commandos arrived within a matter of seconds. “Let’s launch these shuttles, Helm.”

  “Sir,” they replied as the fleet began to move. Feeling proud of my people for their training, I looked around for the few minutes it took for the ships to build up a large initial velocity. The ships accelerated as hard as possible; then shuttles flew from their hangars toward the outgoing Syndicate ships. It would take them four hours to get there with the added push instead of the five hours it would’ve taken the shuttles alone. Less if the Commandos on the ships were able to take full control or even turn off the ships’ engines.

  I watched impatiently as those shuttles sped off. I knew we had heavy casualties from the forces that boarded the ships, but no solid numbers had come back, probably because they were too swamped to keep track of details like that.

  I wished I was on those ships, but I had enough to deal with myself. “What’s the situation on the station?”

  “We’ve taken the key positions. We’ve got recruits locked down in their training rooms. Bok Soo has taken the command center. The kill switch disabling signal did reach all of the recruits on the station, but they retaliated against us, even killing some Commandos in the process. That’s our largest issue as we’re working to contain and isolate all of them. Casualty reports are on your screen.”

  That meant it was bad. I pulled up the indicated file and bit my lip. Thirteen thousand people had been killed by kill switches. My AMC had fared better than I hoped, but the numbers were still grim. Two thousand killed or out of communication. Three thousand wounded, leaving half of the force I sent to the station alive and dealing with four hundred thousand recruits, and a hundred thousand Syndicate personnel.

  Sorting out that many people is going to be a nightmare. I tried to get my mind off what wo
uld happen if my people couldn’t turn the fleeing ships around. Then it would quite possibly turn into a suicide mission instead of a rescue.

  “They also found something else.” Rick sent a message and a recording.

  Oh God. A chill ran down my spine as I fought to hold my composure. The station had enough room to train over three hundred thousand personnel when completed. Currently, two hundred thousand spots were taken up by recruits’ children.

  There hadn’t been many pregnancies with the first training rota; the recruits had been old enough to understand what would happen if they had unprotected sex.

  There had been stories from the second training group. We had listened but not really understood. Quickly after a girl had sex, they took her away, treated her kindly, fed her and then released her back into training. They had extracted the fetuses, putting them in fabricated wombs and grown them. The girls in the second rota just thought having sex got them out of the treatment the others suffered. They had been too young to understand.

  Revulsion raced through my system. They were using children to breed themselves an army.

  There were three groups taken out of their wombs. Although they were just a number of months outside of the womb, they were already being sleep trained and the oldest had bodies of ten-year-olds.

  Rick looked to me, his stare asking what we were going to do.

  We could give them to Earth to look after, but there was no knowing what state it was in. No, we weren’t going to damn these kids to going through the system as I had.

  We would give them a home, somewhere to grow up, and the choice of what they wanted to do.

  Convinced with my own decision, I wrote up orders saying that they would be cared for by the Free Fleet. I would personally oversee it. Being an orphan, I didn’t want these kids to feel like freaks or outsiders.

  I sat back in my seat.

  “Ship reports,” I said blankly. Rick sent them to me. The guilt and thoughts of regret, wondering whether I could’ve done something else, filled me.

  It was never easy. I looked at all of the names. I owed them that.

  Grounded in despair, but in the reality that nothing I could do would bring them back, I looked to the fleet movements.

  Bregend was able to get his battle cruiser back into formation and was working tirelessly to get his weapons and engines in fighting trim, but I thought it was going to take a dock to put it right. It had suffered a lot going through Avar Interi Hermanti’s atmosphere and then got pretty battered up when he was covering Chaleel from Syndicate force’s weapon fire.

  The Resilient was taking longer to put back together just because of the size of her, being a third again the size of the second-largest ship.

  “James, I’ve had to put the second reactor into standby mode and the third at fifty percent. The magnetic bottles are still unstable,” Eddie said without preamble when I opened a channel with him, cutting back my opening words as my brain changed gears.

  “What does that mean?”

  “Either we move or we use our weapons.”

  I winced internally. That was a terrible way to go into a battle. “How long will it be till you can get the second and third generator back online?”

  “She’s going to need a dock; these generators are well past their limits and I might have to reduce the output of the third more as the bottle becomes more unstable. I have the release sequence readied in case it goes critical, which is a possibility that could happen at any moment.”

  “Fixes?” I said, trying to keep desperation out of my voice.

  “We need new generators and soon. I don’t know how long the first is going to last with the constant power usage.”

  “Shit.”

  “Yes, quite.”

  “Talk to the Kuruvians on the factory ships. Get them building reactors. I know Parnmal is making some, but I think you’ll agree it’ll be better to have them as soon as possible.”

  “Yes, sir. How many should I ask them to make?” His tone sounded judgmental.

  “All of them. Might as well get it done.”

  “I’ll get time estimates as quickly as possible.” Joy filled his voice. Obviously I’d passed some test, or at least satisfied his engineering desires. He cut the channel, probably so that I didn’t get the chance to go back on my word.

  A cruiser started braking and information was updated on one of my terminals. My hope died with a grimace. The ship had been taken, but with terrible losses. We’d lost all but forty percent of the troops I’d sent to the ships, giving me two thousand remaining. My shuttles were now less than an hour out and braking hard to match the velocity of their targets and not careen past them.

  I watched tensely as a half hour passed, seemingly like a lifetime. My thoughts were broken by a private call from Eddie.

  “Generators will take three days with the entire crew of the factory ships,” Eddie said.

  I took a minute to realize what he was talking about. “All right, get it started if you can trust them.” It was odd that we were already looking to repairs even as there were battles happening within the same star system. The distances were so large that we would know when someone was doing something well in advance.

  “I do. They’re of the same bloodline as me,” he said, making it seem absurd that they wouldn’t be.

  “Okay,” I said. I would have to look up why that was so important. Maybe they were family members. He could probably tell I was distracted by my tone because he cut the channel. I continued to watch my shuttles. They were inside the Syndicate’s PDS envelope.

  “We have fire coming from one of the battle cruisers!”

  “One of the destroyers is firing!”

  My blood went cold as I saw the shuttles jinking and taking fire. Some of them were ripped apart.

  “Five shuttles destroyed. Six shuttles. The weapon systems have been destroyed and our forces are moving to reinforce the Commandos already on board,” the combined arms officer said.

  Again, I settled into waiting as I read reports filled with casualties and gruesome numbers of all the names of those who were so close to Earth but would never make it back to their home planet alive, whether it be Earth or AIH or the Kuruvian and Sarenmenti home worlds. More ghosts to occupy my sleep. I kept my face a measured mask from years of practice as I looked over the names. My heart ached for the people I’d taken into battle but who wouldn’t make it back. I assured myself it was for a good cause, but a part of me questioned what good cause was worth all of those people dying.

  Fourteen shuttles later, the ships stopped firing. There were a hundred and fifty Commandos on board each.

  Two hours later, the station was under my command and the Syndicate ships that had been running turned around for Earth.

  “All right, cut orders to the ships to join with the station to affect repairs. Ships are to be repaired in this order.” I sent a file to the combined arms and comms officers and they began cutting orders to make it happen.

  I was physically exhausted and emotionally dead.

  “Helm, dock us with the station.”

  Engines fired, meaning that we were open to any and all attacks as we came alongside the station and docked.

  I opened up a channel to the intel department based on my ship, not wanting to bother the busy comms officer.

  “Commander Salchar, we’ve been collecting transmissions from across the planet as soon as we reached full emission. The situation on Earth is complicated, to say the least. Mechas were found in Japan; they took out what are being called collector ships, same ones that grabbed us from the ground. Every country launched their nukes but the Syndicate took them out when they reached space. They proceeded to sanitize the planet of all nuclear activity; with kinetic strikes, silos to power plants had been ripped apart. Refinement plants had been left alone and some submarines had survived. Nuclear power plants had been built in massive underground bunkers and missiles were being made in higher numbers than during the Cold War. Eve
ryone knew how to make nukes now, and were doing so away from the eyes of the PDF.

  “Any kind of resistance was dealt with harshly, usually in the form of Syndicate forces dropping a KEW on the people. The Syndicate made each country supply them with a certain quota of materials. If they fell below the quota, people were recruited from that country. Some countries, like the United States, took another country’s resources to pay for their own quota as they built up their military. There has been increased tension on Earth, with multiple conflicts between world powers. Militaries have been heavily recruiting. In the United States, about seventy percent of the population has signed up with the military for warmth, shelter, and to fight the Syndicate forces.

  “The president believes that America would have not befallen this fate if it hadn’t abided by the Geneva Convention and laws of armed conflict, or really any rules in any conflict. He believes that America should rightly own the world and has turned ninety percent of the recruits he’s got into what he’s called the American Space Force. It’s corrupt to all hell and the soldiers are crap, nothing more than bullies in uniform. Their officers are political up to the hilt. Most of them came from civilian agencies, but knowing that civilian control was dead, they did anything they could to get higher ranks. They don’t care about their troops unless it messes with their schedule.

  “Every country has cut their ties to the United States. All of the other countries are united for once on two things: their hatred for the Syndicate and their wariness of the United States.”

  “Is that wariness warranted?”

  “I would say so. I’ve pulled a letter from the president’s secured terminal and found out that he had gained the Syndicate’s approval to ‘bring the planet Earth under one stable ruler.’”

  “That doesn’t sound good at all.”

  “No, sir. With our arrival, I expect for there to be people vying for our favor. Pushing us to take sides and stop conflicts. Overall, Earth is tired. With the exception of the United States, who are spoiling for a fight. Thanks to a combination of propaganda and a power shift that put the United States into a state of total war, the entire country seems to have become completely militarized, and rides on the line of totalitarianism law.”